Shabby Chic Boho Over the past decade, the line between looking good and feeling good has blurred and it’s one of the best developments to emerge in the field of healthcare. Even better is that more practitioners are catching on to what many have always known, how we look and how we feel go hand in hand.
They’re not in separate categories but together determine our daily self-confidence and quality of life. Thus, a new style of medical professional practice emerges which promotes a more holistic sense of self; one who doesn’t compartmentalize all aspects of health into their respective boxes.
For too long, healthcare professionals existed in their own boxes. Your main primary care physician is separate from your eye doctor, your gynecologist, your podiatrist, and your orthopedist. Rarely does anyone align them. Yet our bodies are not broken down that way. Hormones affect our skin.
Nutrition affects our hair growth. Cortisol ages our skin ten times faster than a decade in the sun. Thus, it’s no wonder why so many exciting new clinics are collaborating to acknowledge all of these connections instead of pretending like they’re not there.
What Does This Mean for You?
But how does this differ from just a catch-all medical spa? When a women’s health clinic focuses on wellness and aesthetic components, doctors and practitioners who make the right connections and note patterns in testing can empower all clients who seek assistance and work from all angles.
For example, acne that won’t respond to topical treatments and therefore requires more expensive options may be stemming from insulin resistance that’s systemically out of whack. Thinning hair that gets blamed on stress and aging just might also be misdiagnosed prior to any thyroid testing.
Yet connecting the dots creates better outcomes because it gets to the heart of the matter. One can spend thousands on facial treatments but if cortisol levels remain high due to poor sleep or chronic stress, the skin will continue to struggle no matter what’s applied to it. And the best shampoos in the world will not help if severe iron deficiency is responsible from the get-go.
But it’s not just those who come seeking wellness who have an advantage. Those who come in for wellness concerns often find they’re able to consider aesthetic options for things they’ve simply learned to live with as “that’s just what happens when you get older.” For example, women in perimenopause learn that some treatments help with skin texture concerns that have been inevitable in this stage; those looking to boost metabolic health find that they’re able to maximize treatments when they are coupled with hormonal adjustments combined with good nutrition.
What to Expect
Therefore, expect the intake process to be more comprehensive than a standard doctor’s office visit or MedSpa consultation, and for good reason. Practitioners want to hear about your full history. Medications and other health considerations about how you live day to day including stress levels, sleep patterns, and even what you’ve noticed aesthetically help create a solid game plan that takes everything into consideration rather than cookie cutter standards without rationale or reasoning.
Expect bloodwork to reveal all: from nutritional deficits to hormonal levels, inflammatory markers and metabolic considerations that will impact appearance and health and vice versa. Where most practitioners have found aesthetic treatments largely unsuccessful prior to resolving health concerns, they’ve found that getting people on track first suddenly renders treatments appropriate and responsive.
Expect treatment plans to evolve over time in a way that makes sense. Where many practitioners want to jump immediately into procedures, because that’s where money is made, those focused on wellness first might suggest mastering foundational components, hormonal levels, nutritional deficiencies, best sleep practices, before injecting anything for preventative measures.
Expect the Wellness Component
The wellness component will cover more than one expects and it’s fascinating how it all connects. For example, hormone optimization has become paramount for many women experiencing perimenopause and menopause as this impacts skin elasticity, collagen production and where one gains weight or muscle retention as well as energy level output.
Furthermore, nutritional support goes way beyond “just take a multivitamin.” Some clinics want detailed versions and provide supplementation needed for what’s recognized as necessary versus desired; others go the IV route for immediate correction when digestive systems fail other systems for absorption.
Metabolic health is respected; from those who typically have weight loss goals come in unfamiliar with what this means with regard to assessment, as those numbers will differ greatly based upon hormones and other assessments relative to one’s health picture instead of a one-size-fits-all caloric diet that fails to acknowledge how bodies operate.
Sleep quality is noted as ideal for aesthetics; stress response is measured for better decision making; lifestyle adjustments matter more than one realizes for both wellness and aesthetics: get it down right for everything else and you can overcome having spent thousands on skincare yet running on five hours of sleep per night stressed out.
The Aesthetic Component
Expect everything from injectable opportunities, laser work, skin resurfacing options, body contouring, hair restoration capabilities, advanced protocols, even things you didn’t know existed for each area, to be offered as part of the aesthetic goal.
However, there’s a difference in how procedures are approached and framed through skilled and learned practitioners who’ve seen the outcome of integrating wellness interventions alongside aesthetic ones.
Practicality includes natural looking results enhanced instead of full potential maximizing every option. For example, those who consider fillers might be encouraged to hold off until stable hormone levels are established, since hormones can change facial volume, and skin reacts differently based upon skin behaviors in conjunction with other stressors.
Treatment Expectations
There’s usually a push for results that work with your body’s response instead of against it, things that encourage collagen development vs blood flow vs heightened responses within your skin’s healing mechanisms. This helps age better as it’s rendered more authentic from deeper rooted solutions instead of surface level fixes.
The Benefits
What works best? One needn’t make so many appointments spanning multiple locations where their information is transferred from room to room but ends up making them repeat themselves over and over across practices.
Now, people get it in real time across specialized branches of knowledge where their testing are shared only with everyone who subsequently create treatment plans that render everything effective instead of working against each other by accident.
The financial benefit makes sense, however unanticipated. While comprehensive testing may seem like an investment up front, when aesthetic treatments find success from direct results after addressing underlying issues, one ultimately spends less when those who threw money at solutions couldn’t find help because they missed the underlying foundation first.
The Takeaway
Ultimately this presents healthcare operating in a smarter capacity as research continues to reveal how much from internal health translates to external appearance, and as more people who recognize healthcare as an interconnected element of everyone’s lives become aware that going through multiple professionals isn’t one size fits all either no matter an artificial wall between “medical” or “aesthetic”.
